Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary

FLINTY — FLOWERINESS

FLINTY, a.

1. Consisting of flint; as a flinty rock.

2. Like flint; very hard, not impressible; as a flinty heart.

3. Cruel; unmerciful; inexorable.

4. Full of flint stones, as flinty ground.

Flinty-slate, a mineral of two kinds, the common and the Lydian stone.

FLIP, n. A mixed liquor consisting of beer and spirit sweetened.

FLIPDOG, n. An iron used, when heated, to warm flip.

FLIPPANCY, n. [See Flippant.] Smoothness and rapidity of speech; volubility of tongue; fluency of speech.

FLIPPANT, a. [L. labor, to slide or slip, and to liber, free.]

1. Of smoother, fluent and rapid speech; speaking with ease and rapidity; having a voluble tongue; talkative.

2. Pert; petulant; waggish.

Away with flippant epilogues.

FLIPPANTLY, adv. Fluently; with ease and volubility of speech.

FLIPPANTNESS, n. fluency of speech; volubility of tongue; flippancy.

[This is not a low, vulgar word, but well authorized and peculiarly expressive.]

FLIRT, v.t. flurt. [This word evidently belongs to the root of L. floreo, or ploro, signifying to throw, and coinciding with blurt.]

1. To throw with a jerk or sudden effort or exertion. The boys flirt water in each other’s faces. He flirted a glove or a handkerchief.

2. To toss or throw; to move suddenly; as, to flirt a fan.

FLIRT, v.i.

1. To jeer or gibe; to throw harsh or sarcastic words; to utter contemptuous language, with an air of disdain.

2. To run and dart about; to be moving hastily from place to place; to be unsteady or fluttering. The girls flirt about the room or the street.

FLIRT, n.

1. A sudden jerk; a quick throw or cast; a darting motion.

In unfurling the fan are several little flirts and vibrations.

2. A young girl who moves hastily or frequently from place to place; a pert girl.

Several young flirts about town had a design to cast us out of the fashionable world.

FLIRT, a. Pert; wanton.

FLIRTATION, n.

1. A flirting; a quick sprightly motion.

2. Desire of attracting notice. [A cant word.]

FLIRTED, pp. Thrown with a sudden jerk.

FLIRTING, ppr. Throwing; jerking; tossing; darting about; rambling and changing place hastily.

FLIT, v.i. [Heb. It is undoubtedly from the same root as fleet, which see.]

1. To fly away with a rapid motion; to dart along; to move with celerity through the air. We say, a bird flits away, or flits in air; a cloud flits along.

2. To flutter; to rove on the wing.

3. To remove; to migrate; to pass rapidly, as a light substance, from one place to another.

It became a received opinion, that the souls of men, departing this life, did flit out of one body into some other.

4. In Scotland, to remove from one habitation to another.

5. To be unstable; to easily or often moved.

An the free soul to flitting air resigned.

FLIT, a. Nimble; quick; swift. Obs. [See Fleet.]

FLITTER, v.i. To flutter, which see.

FLITTER, n. A rag; a tatter. [See Fritter.]

FLITTERMOUSE, n. [Flit, flitter and mouse.]

A bat; an animal that has the fur of a mouse, and membranes which answer the purpose of wings, and enable the animal to sustain itself in a fluttering flight.

FLITTINESS, n. [from flit.] Unsteadiness; levity; lightness.

FLITTING, ppr. Flying rapidly; fluttering; moving swiftly.

FLITTING, n. A flying with lightness and celerity; a fluttering.

FLITTY, a. Unstable; fluttering.

FLIX, n. Down; fur. [Not used.]

FLIXWEED, n. The Sisymbrium sophia, a species of water-cresses, growing on walls and waste grounds.

FLO, n. An arrow. [Not in use.]

1. That which swims or is borne on water; as a float of weeds and rushes. But particularly, a body or collection of timber, boards or planks fastened together and conveyed down a stream; a raft. [The latter word is more generally used in the United States.]

2. The cork or quill used on an angling line, to support it and discover the bite of a fish.

3. The act of flowing; flux; flood; the primary sense, but obsolete.

4. A quantity of earth, eighteen feet square and one deep.

5. A wave. [L. fuctus.]

FLOAT, v.i. [L. fluo, to flow.]

1. To be borne or sustained on the surface of a fluid; to swim; to be buoyed up; not to sink; not to be aground. We say, the water is so shallow, the ship will not float.

2. To move or be conveyed on water; to swim. The raft floats down the river.

Three blustering nights, borne by the southern blast, I floated.

3. To be buoyed up and moved or conveyed in a fluid, as in air.

They stretch their plumes and float upon the wind.

4. To move with a light irregular course.

FLOAT, v.t.

1. To cause to pass by swimming; to cause to be conveyed on water. The tide floated the ship into the harbor.

2. To flood; to inundate; to overflow; to cover with water.

Proud Pactolus floats the fruitful lands.

FLOATAGE, n. Any thing that floats on the water.

FLOAT-BOARD, n. A board of the water-wheel of undershot mills, which receives the impulse of the stream, by which the wheel is driven.

FLOATED, pp.

1. Flooded; overflowed.

2. Borne on water.

FLOATER, n. One that floats or swims.

FLOATING, ppr.

1. Swimming; conveying on water; overflowing.

2. Lying flat on the surface of the water; as a floating leaf.

FLOATING-BRIDGE, n.

1. In the United States, a bridge, consisting of logs or timber with a floor of plank, supported wholly by the water.

2. In war, a kind of double bridge, the upper one projecting beyond the lower one, and capable of being moved forward by pulleys, used for carrying troops over narrow moats in attacking the outworks of a fort.

FLOATSTONE, n. Swimming flint, spungiform quartz, a mineral of a spungy texture, of a whitish gray color, often with a tinge of yellow. It frequently contains a nucleus of common flint.

FLOATY, a. Buoyant; swimming on the surface; light.

FLOCCULENCE, n. [L. flocculus, floccus. See Flock.]

The state of being in locks or flocks; adhesion in small flakes.

FLOCCULENT, a. Coalescing and adhering in locks or flakes.

I say the liquor is broken to flocculence, when the particles of herbaceous matter, seized by those of the lime, and coalescing, appear large and flocculent.

FLOCK, n. [L. floccus. It is the same radically as flake, and applied to wool or hair, we write it lock. See Flake.]

1. A company or collection; applied to sheep and other small animals. A flock of sheep answers to a herd of larger cattle. But the word may sometimes perhaps be applied to larger beasts, and in the plural, flocks may include all kinds of domesticated animals.

2. A company or collection of fowls of any kind, and when applied to birds on the wing, a flight; as a flock of wild-geese; a flock of ducks; a flock of blackbirds. in the United States, flocks of wild-pigeons sometimes darken the air.

3. A body or crowd of people. [little used. Gr. a troop.]

4. A lock of wool or hair. Hence, a flockbed.

FLOCK, v.i. To gather in companies or crowds; applied to men or other animals. People flock together. They flock to the play-house.

Friends daily flock.

FLOCKING, ppr. Collecting or running together in a crowd.

FLOG, v.t. [L. figo, to strike, that is, to lay on; L. flagrum, flagellum, Eng. flail; Gr.; L. plaga, a stroke, Eng. plague, slay.]

To beat or strike with a rod or whip; to whip; to lash; to chastise with repeated blows; a colloquial word, applied to whipping or beating for punishment; as, to flog a schoolboy or a sailor.

FLOGGED, pp. Whipped or scourged for punishment; chastised.

FLOGGING, ppr. Whipping for punishment; chastising.

FLOGGING, n. A whipping for punishment.

FLOOD, n. flud.

1. A great flow of water; a body of moving water; particularly, a body of water, rising, swelling and overflowing land not usually covered with water. Thus there is a flood, every spring, in the Connecticut, which inundates the adjacent meadows. There is an annual flood in the Nile, and in the Mississippi.

2. The flood, by way of eminence, the deluge; the great body of water which inundated the earth in the days of Noah. Before the flood, men live to a great age.

3. A river; a sense chiefly poetical.

4. The flowing of the tide; the semi-diurnal swell or rise of water in the ocean; opposed to ebb. The ship entered the harbor on the flood. Hence flood-tide; young flood; high flood.

5. A great quantity; an inundation; an overflowing; abundance; superabundance; as a flood of bank notes; a flood of paper currency.

6. A great body or stream of any fluid substance; as a flood of light; a flood of lava. Hence, figuratively, a flood of vice.

7. Menstrual discharge.

FLOOD, v.t. To overflow; to inundate; to deluge; as, to flood a meadow.

FLOODED, pp. Overflowed inundated.

FLOODGATE, n.

1. A gate to be opened for letter water flow through, or to be shut to prevent it.

2. An opening or passage; an avenue for a flood or great body.

FLOODING, ppr. Overflowing; inundating.

FLOODING, n. Any preternatural discharge of blood from the uterus.

FLOOD-MARK, n. The mark or line to which the tide rises; high water mark.

FLOOK. [See Fluke, the usual orthography.]

FLOOKING, n. In mining, an interruption or shifting of a load of ore, by a cross vein or fissure.

FLOOR, n. flore. [In early ages, the inhabitants of Europe had no floor in their huts, but the ground. The sense of the word is probably that which is laid or spread.]

1. That part of a building or room on which we walk; the bottom or lower part, consisting, in modern houses, of boards, plands or pavement; as the floor of a house, room, bar, stable or outhouse.

2. A platform of boards or plans laid on timbers, as in a bridge; any similar platform.

3. A story in a building; as the first or second floor.

4. A floor or earthen floor is still used in some kinds of business, made of loam, or of lime, sand and iron dust, as in malting.

5. The bottom of a ship, or that part which is nearly horizontal.

FLOOR, v.t. To lay a floor; to cover timbers with a floor; to furnish with a floor; as, to floor a house with pine boards.

FLOORED, Covered with boards, plank or pavement; furnished with a floor.

FLOORING, ppr. Laying a floor; furnishing with a floor.

FLOORING, n.

1. A platform; the bottom of a room or building; pavement.

2. Materials for floors.

FLOOR-TIMBERS, n. The timbers on which a floor is laid.

FLOP, v.t. [A different spelling of flap.]

1. To clap or strike the wings.

2. To let down the brim of a hat.

FLORA, n. [See Floral.]

1. In antiquity, the goddess of flowers.

2. In modern usage, a catalogue or account of flowers or plants.

FLORAL, a. [L. floralis, from flos, a flower, which see.]

1. Containing the flower, as a floral bud; immediately attending the flower, as a floral leaf.

2. Pertaining to Flora or to flowers; as floral games; floral play.

FLOREN, FLORENCE, n. An ancient gold coin of Edward III of six shillings sterling value, about 134 cents.

FLORENCE, n.

1. A kind of cloth.

2. A kind of wine from Florence in Italy.

FLORENTINE, n.

1. A native of Florence.

2. A kind of silk cloth, so called.

FLORESCENCE, n. [L. florescens, floresco. See Flower.]

In botany, the season when plants expand their flowers.

FLORET, n. A little flower; the partial or separate little flower of an aggregate flower.

FLORID, a. [L. floridus, from floreo, to flower.]

1. Literally, flowery; covered or abounding with flowers; but in this sense little used.

2. Bright in color; flushed with red; of a lively red color; as a florid countenance; a florid cheek.

3. Embellished with flowers of rhetoric; enriched with lively figures; splendid; brilliant; as a florid style; florid eloquence.

FLORIDITY, n. Freshness or brightness of color; floridness.

FLORIDNESS, n.

1. Brightness or freshness of color or complexion.

2. Vigor; spirit. [Unusual.]

3. Embellishment; brilliant ornaments; ambitious elegance; applied to style.

FLORIFEROUS, a. [L. florifer, from flos, a flower, and fero, to bear.] Producing flowers.

FLORIFICATION, n. The act, process or time of flowering.

FLORIN, n. A coin, originally made at Florence. The name is given to different coins of gold or silver, and of different values in different countries. It is also used as a money of account.

FLORIST, n.

1. A cultivator of flowers; one skilled in flowers.

2. One who writes a flora, or an account of plants.

FLORULENT, a. Flowery; blossoming. [Not in use.]

FLOSCULAR, FLOSCULOUS, a. [infra.] In botany, a flosculous flower is a compound flower, composed entirely of florets with funnel-shaped petals, as in burdock, thistle and artichoke. This is the term used by Tournefort. For this Linne used tubulous.

FLOSCULE, n. [L. flosculus.] In botany, a partial or lesser floret of an aggregate flower.

FLOS FERRI, n. [L. flower of iron.] A mineral, a variety of arragonite, called by Jameson, after Hauy, coralloidal arragonite. It occurs in little cylinders, sometimes diverging and ending in a point, and sometimes branched, like coral. Its structure is fibrous, and the surface, which is smooth, or garnished with little crystalline points, is often very white, with a silken luster. It takes this name from its being often found in cavities in veins of sparry iron.

FLOSS, n. [L. flos.] A downy or silky substance in the husks of certain plants.

FLOSSIFICATION, n. A flowering; expansion of flowers. [Novel.]

FLOTA, n. [See Fleet.] A fleet; but appropriately a fleet of Spanish ships which formerly sailed every year from Cadiz to Vera Crus, in Mexico, to transport to Spain the production of Spanish America.

FLOTAGE, n. That which floats on the sea, or on rivers. [Little used.]

FLOTE, v.t. To skim. [Not used or local.]

FLOTILLA, n. [dim. of flota.] A little fleet, or fleet of small vessels.

FLOTSAM, FLOTSON, n. [from float.] Goods lost by shipwreck, and floating on the sea. When such goods are cast on shore or found, the owner being unknown, they belong to the king.

FLOTTEN, pp. Skimmed. [Not in use.]

FLOUNCE, v.i. flouns. [See Flounder.]

1. To throw the limbs and body one way and the other; to spring, turn or twist with sudden effort or violence; to struggle as a horse in mire.

You neither fume, not fret, not flounce.

2. To move with jerks or agitation.

FLOUNCE, v.t. To deck with a flounce; as, to flounce a petticoat or frock.

FLOUNCE, n. A narrow piece of cloth sewed to a petticoat, frock or gown, with the lower border loose and spreading. The present is the age of flounces. 1827.

FLOUNDER, n. A flat fish of the genus Pleuronectes.

FLOUNDER, v.i. [This seems to be allied to flaunt and flounce.]

To fling the limbs and body, as in making efforts to move; to struggle as a horse in the mire; to roll, toss and tumble.

FLOUNDERING, ppr. Making irregular motions; struggling with violence.

FLOUR, n. [originally flower; L. flos, floris, from floreo, to flourish.]

The edible part of corn; meal. In the United States, the modern practice is to make a distinction between flour and meal; the word flour being more usually applied to the finer part of meal, separated from the bran, as wheat flour, rye flour. This is a just and useful distinction.

FLOUR, v.t.

1. To grind and bolt; to convert into flour. Wheat used formerly to be sent to market; but now great quantities of it are floured in the interior country.

2. To sprinkle with flour.

FLOURED, pp. Converted into flour; sprinkled with flour.

FLOURING, ppr. Converting into flour; sprinkling with flour.

FLOURISH, v.i. flur’ish. [L. floresco, from floreo. The primary sense is to open, expand, enlarge, or to shoot out, as in glory, L. ploro.]

1. To thrive; to grow luxuriantly; to increase and enlarge, as a healthy growing plant. The beech and the maple flourish best in a deep, rich and moist loam.

2. To be prosperous; to increase in wealth or honor.

Bad men as frequently prosper and flourish, and that by the means of their wickedness.

When all the workers of iniquity do flourish. Psalm 92:7.

3. To grow in grace and in good works; to abound in the consolations of religion.

The righteous shall flourish like the palmtree. Psalm 92:12.

4. To be in a prosperous state; to grow or be augmented. We say agriculture flourishes, commerce flourishes, manufactures flourish.

5. To use florid language; to make a display of figures and lofty expressions; to be copious and flowery.

They dilate and flourish long on little incidents.

6. To make bold strokes in writing; to make large and irregular lines; as, to flourish with the pen.

7. To move or play in bold and irregular figures.

Impetuous spread the stream, and smoking, flourished o’re his head.

8. In music, to play with bold and irregular notes, or without settled form; as, to flourish on an organ or violin.

9. To boast; to vaunt; to brag.

FLOURISH, v.t. flur’ish.

1. To adorn with flowers or beautiful figures, either natural or artificial; to ornament with any thing showy.

2. To spread out; to enlarge into figures.

3. To move in bold or irregular figures; to move in circles or vibrations by way of show or triumph; to brandish; as, to flourish a sword.

4. To embellish with the flowers of diction; to adorn with rhetorical figures; to grace with ostentatious eloquence; to set off with a parade of words.

5. To adorn; to embellish.

6. To mark with a flourish or irregular stroke.

The day book and inventory book shall be flourished.

FLOURISH, n. flur’ish.

1. Beauty; showy splendor.

The flourish of his sober youth.

2. Ostentatious embellishment; ambitious copiousness or amplification; parade of words and figures; show; as a flourish of rhetoric; a flourish of wit.

He lards with flourishes his long harangue.

3. Figures formed by bold, irregular lines, or fanciful strokes of the pen or graver; as the flourishes about a great letter.

4. A brandishing; the waving of a weapon or other thing; as the flourish of a sword.

FLOURISHED, pp. flur’ished. Embellished; adorned with bold and irregular figures or lines; brandished.

FLOURISHER, n. flur’isher.

1. One who flourishes; one who thrives or prospers.

2. One who brandishes.

3. One who adorns with fanciful figures.

FLOURISHING, ppr. or a. flur’ishing. Thriving; prosperous; increasing; making a show.

FLOURISHINGLY, adv. flur’ishingly. With flourishes; ostentatiously.

FLOUT, v.t. To mock or insult; to treat with contempt.

Phillida flouts me.

He flouted us downright.

FLOUT, v.i. To practice mocking; to sneer; to behave with contempt.

Fleer and gibe, and laugh and flout.

FLOUT, n. A mock; an insult.

FLOUTED, pp. Mocked; treated with contempt.

FLOUTER, n. One who flouts and flings; a mocker.

FLOUTING, ppr. Mocking; insulting; fleering.

FLOUTINGLY, adv. With flouting; insultingly.

FLOW, v.i. [L. fluo, contracted from fugo, for it forms fluri, fuctum. In one case, the word would agree with the root of blow, L. flo; in the other, with the root of fly.]

1. To move along an inclined plane, or on descending ground, by the operation of gravity, and with a continual change of place among the particles or parts, as a fluid. A solid body descends or moves in mass, as a ball or a wheel; but in the flowing of liquid substances, and others consisting of very fine particles, there is a constant change of the relative position of some parts of the substance, as in the case with a stream of water, of quicksilver, and of sand. Particles at the bottom and sides of the stream, being somewhat checked by friction, move slower than those in the middle and near the surface of the current. Rivers flow from springs and lakes; tears flow from the eyes.

2. To melt; to become liquid.

That the mountains might flow down at they presence. Isaiah 64:1.

3. To proceed; to issue. Evils flow from different sources. Wealth flows from industry and economy. All our blessings flow from divine bounty

4. To abound; to have in abundance.

In that day the mountains shall drop down new wine, and the hills shall flow with milk. Joel 3:18.

5. To be full; to be copious; as flowing cups or goblets.

6. To glide along smoothly, without harshness or asperity; as a flowing period; flowing numbers.

7. To be smooth, as composition or utterance. The orator has a flowing tongue.

Virgil is sweet and flowing in his hexameters.

8. To hang loose and waving; as a flowing mantle; flowing locks.

The imperial purple flowing in his train.

9. To rise, as the tide; opposed to ebb. The tide flows twice in twenty four hours.

10. To move in the arteries and veins of the body; to circulate, as blood.

11. To issue, as rays or beams of light.

Light flows from the sun.

12. To move in a stream, as air.

FLOW, v.t. To cover with water; to overflow; to inundate. The low grounds along the river are annually flowed.

FLOW, n.

1. A stream of water or other fluid; a current; as a flow of water; a flow of blood.

2. A current of water with a swell or rise; as the flow and ebb of tides.

3. A stream of any thing; as a flow of wealth into the country.

4. Abundance; copiousness with action; as a flow of spirits.

5. A stream of diction, denoting abundance of words at command and facility of speaking; volubility.

6. Free expression or communication of generous feelings and sentiments.

The feast of reason, and the flow of soul.

FLOWED, pp. Overflowed; inundated.

FLOWER, n. [L. flos, floris, a flower; floreo, to blossom. See Flourish.]

1. In botany, that part of a plant which contains the organs of fructification, with their coverings. A flower, when complete, consists of a calyx, corol, stamen and pistil; but the essential parts are the anther and stigma, which are sufficient to constitute a flower, either together in hermaphrodite flowers, or separate in male and female flowers.

2. In vulgar acceptation, a blossom or flower is the flower bud of a plant, when the petals are expanded; open petals being considered as the principal thing in constituting a flower. But in botany, the petals are now considered as a finer sort of covering, and not at all necessary to constitute a flower.

3. The early part of life, or rather of manhood; the prime; youthful vigor; youth; as the flower of age or of life.

4. The best or finest part of a thing; the most valuable part. The most active and vigorous part of an army are called the flower of the troops. Young, vigorous and brave men are called the flower of a nation.

5. The finest part; the essence.

The choice and flower of all things profitable the Psalms do more briefly contain.

6. He or that which is most distinguished for any thing valuable. We say, the youth are the flower of the country.

7. The finest part of grain pulverized. In this sense, it is now always written flour, which see.

1. Flowers, in chimistry, fine particles of bodies, especially when raised by fire in sublimation, and adhering to the heads of vessels in the form of a powder or mealy substance; as the flowers of sulphur.

A substance, somewhat similar, formed spontaneously, is called efforescence.

2. In rhetoric, figures and ornaments of discourse or composition.

3. Menstrual discharges.

FLOWER, v.i. [from the noun. The corresponding word in L. is floreo.]

1. To blossom; to bloom; to expand the petals, as a plant. In New England peach trees usually flower in April, and apple trees in May.

2. To be in the prime and spring of life; to flourish; to be youthful, fresh and vigorous.

When flowered my youthful spring.

3. To froth; to ferment gently; to mantle, as new beer.

The beer did flower a little.

4. To come as cream from the surface.

FLOWER, v.t. To embellish with figures of flowers; to adorn with imitated flowers.

FLOWER-DE-LIS, n.

1. In heraldry, a bearing representing a lily, the hieroglyphic of royal majesty.

2. In botany, the Iris, a genus of monogynian trianders, called also flag-flower, and often written incorrectly flower-de-luce. The species are numerous.

FLOWERED, pp. Embellished with figures of flowers.

FLOWERET, n. A small flower; a floret.

[In botany, floret is solely used.]